IFTF's Future Now draws on research and forecasting at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, CA think tank specializing in the future of technology, health, and organizational change. It began in September 2003.

A provocative new report from NYU argues that the vast bulk of US government agencies, non-governmental organizations and businesses are not ready to respond to a growing array and frequency of crises. The study, titled...

Jackson Browne filed suit against John McCain, the RNC, and the Ohio National Republican Committee for using "Running on Empty" in an Obama attack ad without the artist's permission. Browne, a liberal, objected to the ad and the Ohio Republicans say they pulled it right away so they don't...

A pair of reports last week suggest that China's science community, while thriving, still has a long way to go before it becomes the kind of knowledge-circulating system needed to support world-class technical innovation.

Last year, I gave a talk at a major design expo on the future of presence. I argued that we need to be keenly aware of the historical relationship between new communications technologies and long-distance travel. Right now, the...

IFTF researcher David Pescovitz shared an article from Nature News today that covers the proliferation of crowdsourced biodata sharing. Recent months have seen a flurry of launches of open, loosely structured...

Wordle is sweeping it's way across the web, and while I've been a reluctant aficionado of tag clouds, this Java applet can turn any arbitrary set of text, web page, or del.icio.us feed and turn it into an -attractive- tag cloud. Yes, attractive is the operative word.

Joe Conason's recent piece in Salon makes a fairly compelling argument that normalizing relations with Cuba has become an immediate strategic priority, not because of Fidel's succession, but because it makes sense to...

For decades, American graduate schools have attracted students from all over the world. Over time, of course, the origins of international graduate students has shifted. For years, the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates has been following...